Last Friday, I sent off a chapter about Motown and its relationship to Cleveland soul music. It went to an editor at an academic press in the South who said he’d get back to me about it first week in July. Here’s hoping. Motown’s Fateful Shadow is the longest chapter I’ve written yet, and it’s […]

So I don’t miss my commitment, here’s my weekly blog. Believe it or not, it’s again about Invisible Soul. On Sunday, I headlined a two-hour program of Invisible Soul tracks largely based on Boddie Recording Company, the three-CD set Numero Group released in November. I, Shari and Jeff also included some tracks friends have given […]

I spent most of this afternoon listening to tracks from Boddie Recording Company, the three-CD box Numero Group released in November. I’m selecting ones to play this Sunday afternoon over WRUW (91.1 FM), the Case Western Reserve radio station. Shari Wilkins and Jeff Bishop, who DJ there, asked me whether I’d head a show based […]

Last time I posted I was into writing for Lodging Hospitality again, in addition to writing occasionally for Hotelnewsnow. Since then, I’ve been to Dallas and reported my LH stories; vacationed on Cape Cod, where I spent some summer time with my parents when I was a little boy; continued to work on Invisible Soul, […]

I went to a show at Beachland Ballroom Jan. 22 that made me think there are second chances, ways to start all over again. It starred the Hesitations, a nine-piece soul group from Cleveland’s 1960s. The singing Hesitations are in their 60s and are prime exponents of Northern Soul, a variant of Motown with a […]

I didn’t want the year to end without mentioning the Horse Flies, an upstate New York band I’ve been following for 20 years. The band played at Beachland Ballroom Dec. 17 and generated a gang of encores. They worked through material from “Until the Ocean,” their latest album, and they’re beginning to focus on a […]

Musings of a peripatetic thinker. Ponderings without a point. Catching up. Intellectual laziness. Call it what you will, I figure I should capture some mind wanderings, given the week past, last night’s entertaining Cleveland Jazz Orchestra concert “The Cleveland Scene,” and upcoming travels. I’ve never been great at headlines. I’m depressed about the elections, though […]

I haven’t read every word in J.D. Biersdorfer’s “iPad: The Missing Manual,” but I’ve read enough to know that a) I want an iPad more than I did before dipping into this; b) I could get around an iPad; and c) I understand the usefulness of an iPad and how its utility differs from other […]

My daughter, Lylah Rose Sandstrom Wolff, has her first global photo credit. It’s a picture of me that she took in New Orleans in January, in color. Slacker genius that she is, Lylah decolorized it, giving it a gritty, black-and-white treatment. It’s not permanent—I believe in updating, at least seasonally—but it’s cool. It’s on page […]

I miss my parents lately, particularly now that I’ve read The Orientalist, Tom Reiss’ biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a tortured intellectual and prolific writer who lived while the great empires—the Ottoman, the Hapsburg, the Russian—died and totalitarianism took over. Nussimbaum was also known as Essad Bey and Kurban Said; he was a Jewish Orientalist whose […]

About the author

I'm a veteran critic and business writer who reads and listens and writes about music, books, hotels and travel. I've been in the business for many years and still enjoy it. My pride and joy is my book, Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CarloWolff